The journey into and through SHOL is very unique for each person. Sure, all our lives are unique in many ways. But as we look at the way life has played out for many in America in the first half of life, we can trace certain patterns that seem to be seen in many lives. The story could go something like this:
We all start at the same place – being born. One grows up in a family, goes to school and completes high school. Following schooling one gets a job or finds some way of making a living. Marriage and family follow. Involvement in one’s community increases often through children, through church or through personal interests. As children leave home and/or retirement approaches, many will engage SHOL.
That is a VERY general path and lots of variations in first half of life will happen of course. For example, I didn’t marry until I was 50 and had no children, yet I can look at the track above and say, yes, that was still my general path. Some may have a more or less stable family situation both growing up or later in life, some more schooling than others, and some are more involved in their communities. But generally this is our American pattern.
However when we engage second half of life, we bring 40 to 50 years of life to the starting point. Through those years we’ve developed various values, habits, and relationships. Our lives have resulted in a wide variety of health and financial situations. Because of our different starting points, how we live out SHOL will vary widely.
Let’s look at some of the factors that will influence our SHOL path.
1) Health – Your health will affect how mobile you are, how able you are to engage in your extended community and how much time and energy you will have to engage in optional activities. It could even affect where you choose to live.
2) Financial stability – This will impact your decisions for how you engage many of the other factors including how long you work, when you retire, what you can do after you retire, and where you live.
3) Family, children and grandchildren – if you have lived in the same community most of your life and your children have stayed close you may not even consider this a factor – it’s more of a given. But if you or your children have scattered or if you don’t have children, decisions about where you spend your retirement years may be greatly influenced (or not) by family. Being single or married at this point will also impact your future in many ways.
4) Desire to ‘work’ – This focuses on the work you do for a living and whether your work is what you do primarily to get paid or whether your work is fulfilling in other ways. Some people really enjoy their jobs and are not quick to retire. Others are counting the days until they are ‘free’.
5) Personal passions – This factor will especially come into play after you retire and you have more time at your discretion. How will you prioritize your time and energy? Travel, family, hobbies?
6) Values & Beliefs – Personal values and beliefs that you’ve developed over a lifetime will greatly influence what decisions are ‘permissible’ and which ones are off the table. Very likely you will continue to act according to your personal values whether you’ve articulated those or not.
7) Location – Where you live as you enter SHOL and where you want to complete your journey may be the same or may be very different places.
8) Trajectory – How you’ve lived your first half of life and all of the first 7 factors has set you on a trajectory of sorts that includes desires, habits, and relationships. Most people will be heavily influenced by the trajectory set in first half of life. Your direction can radically change in SHOL but it will take intentional effort to do so. For example, if you’ve lived your whole life in one town, chances are you will continue to live there surrounded by your community. It would take a great effort to up-root and go into missions or move to a new city. Those who have moved and traveled a lot may settle somewhere but find ways to continue to travel for shorter periods of time.
Consider the factors above and how they have played out in first half of life. How will each of these affect or impact your path for second half of life? Which ones will stay the same, which ones would you like to shift or change? How are your assessments of these factors the same or different than those of your significant other?
While the trajectory developed in first half of life has a certain power, most of us really do have choices about how we engage the journey of second half of life…if we’re intentional about it.
Because we are all starting out on this SHOL journey from a different place, it’s hard to find mentors who have gone down our unique path. That doesn’t mean you can’t find others to share your journey, it’s just important that as we do, we don’t try to give a lot of advice. Rather listen and encourage and walk with each other along the way.
